Almost two-thirds of universities said they did not have harassment advisers or sexual violence liaison officers who had in-depth training on responding to sexual misconduct. (Picture posed by model)
Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

UK universities have been accused of a complacent and inadequate response to sexual harassment and gender violence after a Guardian investigation found inconsistencies in the support and services offered to victims across the country.

The criticism by sexual violence campaigners and the National Union of Students (NUS) came after responses to freedom of information (FoI) requests sent to 120 universities by the Guardian revealed that many do not provide training to staff on sexual misconduct including harassment and assault, lack designated experts to deal with student victims, and in cases of staff harassment of students do not hold independent investigations.

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Rachel Krys, co-director of the End Violence Against Women coalition, said the responses revealed a “shocking and depressing complacency by universities” towards sexual misconduct. She added: “There seems to be a lack of urgency in universities to get a handle on this and admit what they’re currently doing isn’t good enough and is failing everybody.”

Hareem Ghani, national women’s officer at the NUS, said the responses reinforced its assessment that “universities are ill-equipped to deal with sexual harassment and violence”.

Of the 104 universities that responded to the Guardian’s FoI requests, more than a third (39%) said they provided no training to staff on sexual misconduct, including harassment, assault, rape, stalking, domestic violence and other forms of gender violence. Many universities reported that they did not provide specific training on sexual misconduct but the issue was mentioned in general equality and diversity training, or in relation to their internal policies or legal responsibilities.

Only 27 universities reported that training on sexual misconduct was mandatory, representing just under half of universities that do provide some level of training.

Only 21% of the universities surveyed said they had a designated point of contact with training on sexual misconduct. More than half of universities said there was a member of staff students could approach, with some citing workers who might have no specialist training, such as head bar managers and personal tutors, deans and porters, as possible first points of contact.

Nearly a quarter of the universities (23%) reported that they had no clearly designated point of contact for victims of sexual misconduct at all. This is despite an inquiry by the higher education representative body Universities UK (UUK) last year recommending a centralised reporting system for sexual violence and harassment, supported by well-trained staff.

Just under a quarter (24%) of the universities said their student advisers, who provide help and support to students with welfare and academic issues, had no training on sexual misconduct.

Almost two-thirds (63%) of universities said they did not have harassment advisers or sexual violence liaison officers who had in-depth training on responding to sexual misconduct. Some other universities reported that they would be training staff to take on such roles later this academic year, while others said they liaised with external specialist services such as the local Rape Crisis centre.

The findings also raise concern about the fairness of investigations into student complaints of sexual misconduct by staff, with almost half of the respondent universities stating that they allowed staff to investigate departmental colleagues.

The majority of universities said they would consider a student’s concerns about the impartiality of an investigator. However, 20% said students had no right to request an investigator be replaced if there were concerns about a potential conflict of interest.

Furthermore, only 10 universities require staff who investigate complaints of sexual misconduct to have had training on how to handle such cases.

Only one respondent, University College London, reported having carried out an audit of sexual harassment cases, including complaints against staff, in the past six years. Its review this year uncovered four formal complaints, rather than zero cases as it originally reported in response to a previous Guardian FoI survey. UCL then approached the Guardian with the correct figure. Two involved staff-on-student harassment and two staff-on-staff harassment, which were all investigated.

Meanwhile, the Guardian has learned that UUK will not publish national guidelines on tackling staff-on-student harassment until late 2018, two years after its report on tackling student-on-student harassment.

Tiffany Page, co-founder of the 1752 Group, set up to address staff-student sexual harassment in higher education, said universities were providing inadequate responses to reports of sexual misconduct. She said: “These findings show how far away the sector is in taking sexual violence and harassment seriously. A year on from the Universities UK Taskforce report, while many institutions have made good progress, it is clear that others have not implemented even the most basic recommendations.

“In many institutions, students remain unsupported at every stage of the process of reporting sexual misconduct. This lack of a clear pathway of support for students means that reporting numbers will remain low. To address this, every university needs to appoint trained sexual violence officers that prioritise the wellbeing of students in guiding them through reporting and university disciplinary procedures.”

She said that where investigations might be carried out by a member of staff who was a colleague of the alleged perpetrator, “this conflict of interest is completely unacceptable”.

Krys said it was “really important” that all staff at least underwent awareness training about sexual harassment and violence to challenge “damaging myths that in effect blame the victim”. She said: “Time and time again it’s non-experts making these judgments that close down the complainant and see them leave [the university], so the case goes away.”

The senior Conservative MP Maria Miller, who chairs the Commons women and equalities committee, said it was worrying that universities were ignoring the need for reform. She said: “Around half of female students say they have been sexually harassed on campus, so it is surprising that more universities are not seeing training support services and professional independent reporting mechanisms as a basic part of university life. I urge Universities UK to act swiftly to make sure universities have a zero-tolerance approach to sexual harassment of all types.”

A spokeswoman for UUK said it would carry out a survey in the spring to assess what progress universities had made in “developing institution-wide approaches to tackle harassment”. She added: “All students and staff are entitled to a safe and positive experience and all universities have a duty to provide that outcome.”